Reinaldo Arenas
Reinaldo Arenas | |
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![]() Reinaldo Arenas in 1986 | |
Born | Reinaldo Arenas Fuentes July 16, 1943 Aguas Claras, Holguín Province, Cuba |
Died | December 7, 1990AIDS-related suicide) New York City, New York, United States | (aged 47) (drugs overdose
Occupation | Writer |
Nationality | Cuban |
Period | 1966–1990 |
Genre | poetry, novel, drama |
Notable works | Pentagonia Before Night Falls |
Reinaldo Arenas (July 16, 1943 – December 7, 1990) was a Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright known as an early sympathizer, and later critic, of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, and a rebel of the Cuban government.
Life[]
Arenas was born in the countryside of Newport Beach Aguas Claras, Holguín Province, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín when he was a teenager. He was 6 went he started school, attending Rural School 91 in Perronales County. In that school is when his interest in boys flourished. He writes about his sexual exploration with himself and the people around him, even detailing that most of his sexual activity was with animals. He talks openly of the first times he has sex, while incomplete, it was with his cousin, Dulce Maria. He shares that, what he calls the consummated act (meaning mutual penetration), was with his cousin Orlando when he was 8 and his cousin 12. He says, “In the country, sexual energy generally overcomes all prejudice, repression, and punishment…Physical desire overpowers whatever feelings of machismo our fathers take upon themselves to instill in us.”[citation needed]
After moving to Holguín when he was a teen, Arenas got a job at a guava paste factory. When conditions in the city started to get worse, around 1958, he decided that he wanted to join the guerillas (Castro and his movement), by then he was 14. He walked to Velasco where he met Cuco Sánchez who took him to the rebel headquarters in the Sierra Gibara. A guerilla commander, Eddy Suñol, interviewed him. He said, “We have plenty of guerrillas; what we need is weapons.” After ten days with them, he went back to Holguín with the intention of killing a guard and taking his weapon. When he made it back to the city, he went home to see his grandparents who were not so happy to see him. Because he made the mistake of leaving a note saying he was going to join the guerillas, the women that lived with his grandparents spread the news like wildfire. Batista’s police were then looking for him. His brief trip home made him realize he couldn’t stay so he trekked back to Velasco to the rebel encampment. They had to accept him at that point.[citation needed]
When he was 16, he was awarded a scholarship at La Pantoja, the Batista military camp that had been converted into a polytechnic institute. At the school, one of the most important courses was on Marxism-Leninism. Students had to master the Manual of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Manual of Political Economy by Nikitin; Foundations of Socialism in Cuba by Blas Roca. Arenas graduated as an agricultural accountant, and described his schooling as "communist indoctrination".[citation needed]
The first time Arenas was in Havana was in 1960. He returned later when he enrolled in a planning course at the University of Havana and reported to the Hotel Nacional. While in the program, he worked for INRA, the National Institute for Agrarian Reform. It wasn’t until around 1963 that Arenas started to live his life as a gay man, and even then, it was still a life of extreme repression and privacy. He feared ending up in a UMAP (Military Units for Aid to Production) concentration camp, ones made specifically for queers in Cuba. A relationship with a man named Miguel, who was later arrested and taken to a UMAP, was the beginning of Arenas’ life as an out gay man.
Throughout his life, Arenas became friends with and had relationships with many gay men. Even going so far to say that at one point, he had had sex with at least 5,000 men. He watched as various friends and acquaintances pledged their allegiance to the regime in exchange for safety. They became informers for the government and reported other men, oftentimes friends and/or people they had relationships with in the past. The intention was to find queer men and either prosecute and jail them or turn them into informers too. The reward for cooperating with the regime was your life. In order to become an informer, though, it often meant denouncing your homosexuality publicly – a very humiliating act. The same thing happened when you were found out to be critical of the regime, you were forced to stand in public and say that you were wrong. Failure to do so would result in death.[citation needed]
Arenas watched this happen with Herberto Padilla. He had written a book that was critical of the Revolution to an official competition. Padilla was arrested in 1971 and after 30 days in a cell, he decided to speak. Various Cuban intellectuals were invited by State Security to hear what he had to say. Padilla stood in front of everyone and apologized for everything he had done. He painted himself as a coward and a traitor, apologizing for his previous work and throwing blame on himself. He publicly denounced his friends and his wife, saying they had counterrevolutionary attitudes. Those he named were forced to go to the microphone and accept blame for their actions and say that they were traitors too.[citation needed]
In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and literature without completing a degree. The following year, he began working at the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí.[1] During his time working for INRA, he spent a lot of time at the National Library. After writing a short story and presenting it to a committee, he received a telegram that they were interested in talking to him. When he went, he met María Teresa Freye de Andrade, who was the director of the National Library. She orchestrated Arenas’ move from INRA to the Library. From then on, he was employed there. After María Teresa lost her job and was replaced by Castro’s police, Captain Sidroc Ramos, Arenas decided the Library wasn’t where he wanted to be.[citation needed] It was about this time that his talent was noticed, and he received a literary award for his novel, Singing from the Well, at Cirilo Villaverde National Competition held by UNEAC (National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists).
His El mundo alucinante (This Hallucinatory World, published in the U.S. as The Ill-Fated Peregrinations of Fray Servando) was awarded "first Honorable Mention" in 1966. Although, as the judges could find no better entry and they refused to award it to Arenas, no First Prize was awarded that year. His writings and openly gay life were, by 1967, bringing him into conflict with the communist government. He left the Biblioteca Nacional and became an editor for the Cuban Book Institute until 1968. From 1968 to 1974 he was a journalist and editor for the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba.
In 1974, he was sent to prison after being charged and convicted of "ideological deviation" and for publishing abroad without official consent. He escaped from prison and tried to leave Cuba by launching himself from the shore on a tire inner tube. The attempt failed and he was rearrested near Lenin Park and imprisoned at the notorious El Morro Castle alongside murderers and rapists. He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers. He was able to collect enough paper this way to continue his writing. However, his attempts to smuggle his work out of prison were discovered and he was severely punished. Threatened with death, he was forced to renounce his work and was released in 1976.[2] In 1980, as part of the Mariel Boatlift, he fled to the United States.[3] He came on the boat San Lázaro captained by Cuban émigré Roberto Agüero.
In 1987, Arenas was diagnosed with AIDS; he continued to write and speak out against the Cuban government. He mentored many Cuban exile writers, including John O'Donnell-Rosales. After battling AIDS, Arenas died of an intentional overdose of drugs and alcohol on December 7, 1990, in New York City. In a suicide letter written for publication, Arenas wrote:
Due to my delicate state of health and to the terrible depression that causes me not to be able to continue writing and struggling for the freedom of Cuba, I am ending my life ... I want to encourage the Cuban people abroad as well as on the Island to continue fighting for freedom. ... Cuba will be free. I already am.[4]
In 2012 Arenas was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display which celebrates LGBT history and people.[5]
Writings[]
Despite his short life and the hardships imposed during his imprisonment, Arenas produced a significant body of work. In addition to significant poetic efforts ("El Central", "Leprosorio"), his Pentagonia is a set of five novels that comprise a "secret history" of post-revolutionary Cuba. It includes Singing from the Well (in Spanish also titled "Celestino before Dawn"), Farewell to the Sea (whose literal translation is "The Sea Once More"), Palace of the White Skunks, the Rabelaisian Color of Summer, and The Assault. In these novels Arenas’ style ranges from a stark realist narrative and high modernist experimental prose to absurd, satiric humor. His second novel, Hallucinations ("El Mundo Alucinante"), rewrites the story of the colonial dissident priest Fray Servando Teresa de Mier.
In interviews, his autobiography, and in some of his fiction work itself, Arenas draws explicit connections between his own life experience and the identities and fates of his protagonists. As is evident and as critics such as Francisco Soto have pointed out, the "child narrator" in "Celestino", Fortunato of "The Palace...", Hector of "Farewell..", and the triply named "Gabriel/Reinaldo/Gloomy Skunk" character in "Color" appear to live progressive stages of a continuous life story that is also linked to Arenas's own.[6] In turn, Arenas consistently links his individual narrated life to the historical experience of a generation of Cubans. A constant theme in his novels and other writing is the condemnation of the Castro government, although Arenas also critiques the Catholic Church, US culture and politics. He also critique a series of literary personalities in Havana and internationally, particularly those who he believed had betrayed him and suppressed his work (Severo Sarduy and Ángel Rama are notable examples). His "Thirty truculent tongue-twisters", which he claims circulated in Havana and which are reprinted in "The Color of Summer", mock everyone from personal friends who he suggests may have spied on him to figures such as Nicolás Guillén, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Barnet, Sarduy and of course Castro himself.
His autobiography, Before Night Falls was on the New York Times list of the ten best books of the year in 1993. In 2000 this work was made into a film, directed by Julian Schnabel, in which Arenas was played by Javier Bardem. An opera based on the autobiography with libretto and music by Cuban-American composer Jorge Martín premiered at the Fort Worth Opera on May 29, 2010, with baritone Wes Mason singing the role of Arenas.
The Reinaldo Arenas Papers are held at Princeton University Library. “The collection consists of personal and working papers of Reinaldo Arenas” and includes typescript and typescript drafts, essays, interviews, newspaper clippings, correspondence and other documents.[7]
Notable works[]
- El mundo alucinante (1966) ISBN 978-84-8310-775-1, OCLC 421023; Scholarly edition by Enrico Mario Santí; English translation Hallucinations (2001 reissue) ISBN 978-0-14-200019-9.
- Cantando en el pozo (1982) (originally published as Celestino antes del alba (1967)) English translation Singing from the Well (1987) ISBN 978-0-14-009444-2.
- El palacio de las blanquisimas mofetas (1982) English translation The Palace of the White Skunks (1990) ISBN 978-0-14-009792-4.
- Otra vez el mar (1982) English translation Farewell to the Sea (1987) ISBN 978-0-14-006636-4.
- El color del verano (1982) English translation The Color of Summer (1990) ISBN 978-0-14-015719-2.
- El Asalto (1990) English translation The Assault (1992) ISBN 978-0-14-015718-5.
- El portero (1987) English translation The Doorman (1991) ISBN 978-0-8021-3405-9.
- Antes que anochezca (1992) English translation Before Night Falls (1993) ISBN 978-0-14-015765-9.
- Mona and Other Tales (2001) ISBN 978-0-375-72730-6 This is an English translation of a collection of short stories originally published in Spanish in Spain between 1995 and 2001
- Con los ojos cerrados (1972).
- La vieja Rosa (1980), English Translation Old Rosa (1989) ISBN 978-0-8021-3406-6.
- El central (1981), ISBN 978-0-380-86934-3.
- Termina el desfile (1981).
- Arturo, la estrella más brillante (1984).
- Cinco obras de teatro bajo el título Persecución (1986).
- Necesidad de libertad (1986).
- La Loma del Angel (1987), English Translation Graveyard of the Angels (1987) ISBN 978-0-380-75075-7.
- Voluntad de vivir manifestándose (1989) ISBN 978-987-9396-55-1.
- Viaje a La Habana (1990). ISBN 978-0-89729-544-4.
- Final de un cuento (El Fantasma de la glorieta) (1991) ISBN 978-84-86842-38-3.
- Adiós a mamá (1996) ISBN 978-0-89729-791-2
See also[]
- LGBT rights in Cuba
- List of Cuban American writers
- Cuban American literature
- List of Famous Cuban-Americans
- American literature in Spanish
References[]
![]() | This section uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources. (July 2021) |
- ^ Cuba Center Archived February 15, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Reinaldo Arenas". The Knitting Circle: Literature. Archived from the original on June 27, 2004. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
- ^ "Reinaldo Arenas Papers". Princeton Libraries. Archived from the original on May 12, 2008. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
- ^ "Reinaldo Arenas' Last Letter". Montclair University. Archived from the original on July 20, 2011.
- ^ "2012 Inductees". Archived from the original on June 14, 2012. Retrieved August 11, 2021.
- ^ Soto, Francisco. "Reinaldo Arenas." Twayne Publishers: London, 1998.
- ^ Princeton University Library https://rbsc.princeton.edu/collections/reinaldo-arenas-papers
Further reading[]
English
- Reinaldo Arenas (Twayne's World Author Series) / Francisco Soto., 1998
- Reinaldo Arenas: The Pentagon��a / Francisco Soto. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994
- The postmodern poetic narrative of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas / Ileana C Zéndegui., 2004
- The manufacture of an author : Reinaldo Arenas's literary world, his readers and other contemporaries / Claudio Canaparo., 2000
- Reinaldo Arenas: tradition and singularity / Francisco Soto., 1988
- Reinaldo Arenas: the agony is the ecstasy / Dinora Caridad Cardoso., 1997
- Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place / Jacqueline Loss. NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005 [A detailed study of Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit's cosmopolitan aspects]
- "Lifewriting with a Vengeance: Truth, Subalternity and Autobiographical Determination in Reinaldo Arenas's Antes que anochezca,' By: Sandro R. Barros, Caribe: Revista de Cultura y Literatura, 2006 Summer; 9 (1): 41-56.
- "A Postmodern 'Play' on a Nineteenth-Century Cuban Classic: Reinaldo Arenas's La Loma del Angel," By: H. J. Manzari, Decimonónica: Journal of Nineteenth Century Hispanic Cultural Production, 2006 Summer; 3 (2): 45–58.
- "The Molecular Poetics of Before Night Falls," By: Teresa Rizzo, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, 2006 Spring; 11–12.
- "Queer Parody and Intertextuality: A Postmodern Reading of Reinaldo Arenas's El cometa Halley," By: Francisco Soto, IN: Ingenschay, Desde aceras opuestas: Literatura/cultura gay y lesbiana en Latinoamérica. Madrid, Spain; Frankfurt, Germany: Iberoamericana; Vervuert; 2006. pp. 245–53
- "Revisiting the Circuitous Odyssey of the Baroque Picaresque Novel: Reinaldo Arenas's El mundo alucinante," By: Angela L. Willis, Comparative Literature, 2005 Winter; 57 (1): 61–83.
- "The Traumas of Unbelonging: Reinaldo Arenas's Recuperations of Cuba," By: Laurie Vickroy, MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, 2005 Winter; 30 (4): 109–28.
- "Difficult Writings: AIDS and the Activist Aesthetic in Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls," By: Diana Davidson, Atenea, 2003 Dec; 23 (2): 53–71.
Spanish
- Reinaldo Arenas : una apreciación política / Adolfo Cacheiro., 2000
- Reinaldo Arenas : recuerdo y presencia / Reinaldo Sánchez., 1994
- La escritura de la memoria : Reinaldo Arenas, textos, estudios y documentación / Ottmar Ette., 1992
- Reinaldo Arenas : narrativa de transgresión / Perla Rozencvaig., 1986
- La alucinación y los recursos literarios en las novelas de Reinaldo Arenas / Félix Lugo Nazario., 1995
- El círculo del exilio y la enajenación en la obra de Reinaldo Arenas / María Luisa Negrín., 2000
- La textualidad de Reinaldo Arenas : juegos de la escritura posmoderna / Eduardo C Bejar., 1987
- Reinaldo Arenas : alucinaciones, fantasía y realidad / Julio E Hernández-Miyares., 1990
- El desamparado humor de Reinaldo Arenas / Roberto Valero., 1991
- Ideología y subversión : otra vez Arenas / Reinaldo Sánchez., 1999
External links[]
- Reinaldo Arenas at Find a Grave
- Reinaldo Arenas recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division's audio literary archive on December 7, 1980
- Aurelio Cortés collection of Reinaldo Arenas at Princeton University Library Special Collections
- Dolores Koch collection of Reinaldo Arenas at Princeton University Library Special Collections
- 1943 births
- 1990 suicides
- American writers of Cuban descent
- Cuban dramatists and playwrights
- Exiles of the Cuban Revolution in the United States
- 20th-century Cuban novelists
- 20th-century Cuban poets
- Cuban male poets
- Cuban refugees
- Drug-related suicides in New York (state)
- LGBT Hispanic and Latino American people
- Gay writers
- Hispanic and Latino American dramatists and playwrights
- Hispanic and Latino American novelists
- LGBT writers from Cuba
- LGBT writers from the United States
- People prosecuted under anti-homosexuality laws
- People with HIV/AIDS
- LGBT dramatists and playwrights
- LGBT novelists
- 20th-century American novelists
- 20th-century American male writers
- 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century American poets
- American male novelists
- American male poets
- American male dramatists and playwrights
- Cuban male novelists
- Suicides in New York City